


among the fallen stones, into the night less known

by kimaracretak



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Development, Conflicted Loyalties, Enemies to ... Something, F/F, The Shadowfell, Unintentional Cross-Planar Roadtrips, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-08 19:16:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14700489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: Thrown into the Shadowfell during the battle under Whitestone, Keyleth and Ripley must survive both the wilderness and each other if they ever hope to see Exandria again. Neither of them are prepared for how the Shadowfell changes them.





	among the fallen stones, into the night less known

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sevenofspade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/gifts).



> The Shadowfell presented here is a mix of Matt's version, the Shadowfell as it appears in D&D sourcebooks (mostly 4th edition's _The Manual of the Planes_ and _The Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond_ ), and my own additions/interpretations - for all that I love Matt's Shadowfell, we didn't see much of it beyond Thar Amphala, and that didn't really work for the story this wanted to be.
> 
> Thank you for such an enthusiastic letter and a great set of freeform tags. I hope I have done them justice for you :)
> 
> Title from IQ, "From the Outside In".

Light descends in empty shades, undermines the time we lost.  
Here today I'm not afraid to calculate the hollow cost.  
Never crossed that good expression, said I wouldn't and I didn't.  
Cutthroat counsel that won't free me,  
Language I could only dream of until now.  
I'm ready to begin, the silence is wearing thin.  
  
IQ, "Without Walls"

 

* * *

 

There is a moment, in the space between onyx stone under her fingertips and grey dust in her mouth, that Keyleth has the time to think: _oh, this was a mistake_.

It's hardly the first mistake she's made recently. It's even one of the more understandable ones. But in the moment that is not quite an ending, she doesn't quite feel anything at all.

Feelings come later, along with a niggling curiosity as to where things went _irrevocably_ wrong. Was it when they failed to catch Ripley, leaving her free to circle around and join them at the ziggurat? Was it when Cassandra bid them farewell, serene and cruel between the Briarwoods that she called _family_? Was it when she and Pike sent sunlight streaking through Sylas and tipped Delilah over into something that was simply desperation given a human form?

When she can think again Keyleth turns the battle over and over in memory, the long oppressive days in the shrouded city and its catacombs, the dead and the dying, trying to figure out where they - where she - went wrong. Where she could have done something different, before Ripley shot Vex out of the air and Keyleth skidded too close to the strange black orb.

Before she ended up _here_.

Before she ended up here _with Anna Ripley_.

Keyleth is the one to break the silence as they face each other across the blasted grey-black rocks that are all she can see for kilometres around. There's no orb on this side, no sign of any other portal. There's hardly even a hill to provide her any means of orientation. There's just the rocks, and the oppressive weight of clouds numb with a sadness they can't speak. And Ripley.

Ripley, who, just like Keyleth, cannot answer the single question: _Why?_

Of course neither of them can answer, Keyleth thinks, lip curling as she watches Ripley try to come up with an answer. They're the afterthoughts of their respective bands, too slow, or too soft, unmissed sacrifices in a war Keyleth didn't want and Ripley wasn't paid enough for.

She'd almost laugh at the thought, were it not for the fact that this place has already warped her so much she's thought of Ripley as _soft_.

"Your friends sent me," Ripley finally says. "I don't think they knew what would happen, just that it was a convenient way to get rid of me."

Keyleth clings to her staff as she feels her knees go weak. If they sent Ripley - if they thought she was -

"Don't worry," Ripley says with a carelessness at odds with the smirk curling her lips. "I don't think they know what happened to you at all."

 _They'll find me_ , Keyleth thinks, _they love me and they'll find me_ , but what actually comes out of her mouth is "Fuck you, Anna."

Ripley shrugs. "If you want. There's not much else to do here, it seems." She surveys the landscape while Keyleth sinks to the ashy ground, free hand pressed to her flaming cheeks. "Do you at least know where we are?" she asks, as if the reality of their situation is just now starting to sink in with her taunts exhausted.

Of course she asks, Keyleth thinks, and can't help the weak laugh that escapes her. Of course Ripley asks, and of course Keyleth knows - has known since the moment the orb spat her bloody into the mists. But her throat constricts around the words anyway, like maybe if she doesn't say it it wouldn't quite be real, that they would remain trapped in some sort of elemental limbo and not in ... "The Shadowfell."

Somewhere behind them, a creature Keyleth very much hopes they can put off meeting shrieks its agreement.

Ripley, every god in Exandria damn her, smiles.

"It's not fucking _funny_." Keyleth hauls herself back to her feet, every bone and muscle in her body screaming in protest. "We need to find cover. Or, supplies, or ... someplace to wait until my friends find us."

She looks to where the pale grey sun hangs limply against the horizon, a depressing, colourless mimicry of the vibrant Feywild twilight she'd seen once before. She has a feeling this sun won't be any more use to navigate by.

"They're not coming for you," Ripley says, and maybe it's just Keyleth's imagination but she sounds a little less pleased about that than she did just moments ago. Maybe she's starting to realise that means no one's coming for _her_ , either.

"Keep telling yourself that." Keyleth shivers as the wind picks up around them. Every centimetre of her aching body rebels at the thought of walking anywhere else today, but they have to.

 _She_ has to.

It hits her, then, that for all Ripley's being a bitch, she doesn't ... sound like she's planning to leave Keyleth to die in the wasteland. In fact, she had more or less _agreed_ that they should seek shelter together. Was that weird? That was weird, right?

Then again, her own hatred seemed to have momentarily ebbed. She can still feel it, a flickering worried thing beneath her heart, but it doesn't burn with the same need to be indulged in the same way that it did in the dead city.

Ripley's watching her placidly, arms folded. Keyleth stares at the untouched gun at Ripley's waist and wonders how many of the pouches on her belt have bullets. Wonders if she's making a very big mistake that will lead to her finding out when she opens her mouth and says "So are we like ... a team, for right now?"

Ripley snorts. "That's pushing it. But you're alive, which means I trust you a damn sight more than anything else in this fucking place."

Trust. Keyleth's seen trust kill almost more people than magic, and she clenches her fingers tighter around her staff, imagining she could hold Ripley's trust like a physical thing. Could crush it, if need be.

It might even be easy, Keyleth thinks idly. Ripley's hair is coming undone, the bandages around her wrist turning grey as the sky here, and she too was clearly injured in her own fall through the orb. What a fucking sight the two of them must be, if anything here had the eyes to see them.

"So?" Ripley demands, when Keyleth doesn't say anything. "You said we should be finding shelter. Where are we going?"

If Anna Ripley could be scared, Keyleth thinks, this is about as close as she could get. "There should be paths." Keyleth bites her lip, brow furrowing as she once more helplessly scans the gloomy horizon. "The Shadowfell, it's - it's a mirror of our plane. Grimy and broken and fucking dismal, but some things should be the same."

"Maybe there's a mirror version of you that grew up," Ripley muses, picking at the bandages overlapping the stump of her wrist.

The words sting more than they should, barbs sharpened in this twisted land. "Yeah, well. Maybe there's a version of you that's _nice_."

Ripley laughs mirthlessly, and when Keyleth risks a glance over at her, her lips are curled in a defiantly cruel smirk. "I tried that once, as all good scientists must experiment. It did me poorly."

Maybe this token peace has a shorter lifetime than she'd hoped.

Then again, Vox Machina hasn't been so great at the whole nice thing lately anyway. Maybe this is no less than she deserves.

A glimmer in the corner of her eye distracts Keyleth before the dull pulse of guilt can take any further hold. She squints closer and, yes, in the dying light of the sun she can see that the rocks facing northwards are more purposefully arranged, forming a broad wavering line that gleams matte black.

"We go that way." She gestures north, watches Ripley watch the line of her arm. Waits for the inevitable question that doesn't actually come.

"Go on, then," is all Ripley says.

Keyleth's not that naive. "Oh no. You first. I've seen you run off before, remember?"

"And where, exactly, do you think I would run off to here?" Ripley snaps, but she stalks off in the direction Keyleth indicated anyway.

Keyleth's caught so off guard that for a long moment she doesn't even follow, just stares at the long straight line of Ripley's back moving further away from her in silence.

She's appalling, Keyleth reminds herself. She's cruel and abrasive and brilliant and a murder and -

\- and maybe she's right, because they've been here for at least an hour counting the time they sat in stony silence refusing to acknowledge the other, and Vox Machina still hasn't come for her. Either they have no idea where she is, think she's dead or vanished, or they're -

No. They were alive last time Ripley saw them, Keyleth's sure of it if for no other reason than her certainty that Ripley would have been unable to resist gloating about it. They went to Whitestone for Percy. They'll come to the Shadowfell for her, even if it takes them a little bit.

With that thought firmly in mind, she readjusts her grip on her staff, stands up straight, and, summoning every last bit of confidence the Voice of the Tempest needs to have, follows Ripley north.

 

**

 

Despite her outward attempt at certainty, the appearance of the inn takes Keyleth by surprise.

The mists had started to thicken as night fell - night which, though lit with far fewer stars than Exandria, nevertheless provides some odd comfort in its proof that time isn't as unpredictable as in the Feywild - and Keyleth had been forced to take the lead as Ripley's human eyes failed in the dark. It clings to the ground like an unearthly carpet, dampening their boots even as tough sprigs of brittle grass try to poke through the tops.

And then it's simply ... _gone_.

It clears at a crossroads, another cracked onyx path neatly bisecting the one they've been following, and to the left the path turns into the expansive courtyard of a lonely inn.

"Stop," Keyleth says, a moment too late as she does just that, and Ripley collides softly with her back.

"What - _oh_."

The courtyard sprawls ahead of them, a vast empty space illuminated by a dozen brilliant blue lights that spill from hanging iron lanterns perched on tree-like posts. The building itself is three stories tall, crowned with a bell tower that seems to catch the light and refract it back with subtle shifts as the bell inside sways with the wind.

It's the first sign of life Keyleth has seen rather than heard, but somehow, it isn't a comfort. There's a _hunger_ to the inn, like it knows exactly what it means for it to sit at such a lonely crossroads in an already disconnected land.

As if roused by the thought of hunger, Keyleth's stomach growls. "We need to stay here," she says. The words sound hollow, like they're coming from outside her body. "We need ... food. Information."

"I agree," Ripley says, and when Keyleth looks over there's a self-satisfied smirk tugging at the corner of Ripley's mouth that's almost more discomfiting than the sight of the inn.

Somehow, Keyleth was expecting more of a fight from her, nevermind that this was more conversation than they'd exchanged in all their hours of walking. It occurs to her, as they make their way up to the single door almost more carefully in the light than the dark, that maybe they need each other more than they've been willing to admit.

The thought distracts her so much that she almost doesn't notice that there are no windows to break the smooth wall of worked stone in front of her.

"Wait," she says urgently, catching Ripley's hand before she can push the door open. "Look."

Ripley frowns but complies, and Keyleth can feel the tension creep into her hand as she too notices the unbroken stone. She can almost hear her analysing the new information, but then she shrugs. "Doesn't matter."

"Doesn't matter? What kind of inn doesn't have windows?" Keyleth's well aware they don't have much other choice, but Ripley's complacency bothers her.

But then Ripley grins, sharp and lethal, and pulls her hand from Keyleth's to place it over the pistol at her waist for the first time. "I'm sure we'll figure something out, if we have to."

She pushes open the door before Keyleth can protest further, and immediately more of the strange blue light spills over them, carried on the wings of a sadder tune than any Keyleth's ever heard in a tavern before.

It's immediately obvious that, despite the forbidding exterior, inside the tavern is much like any she's been in in Exandria. The common room is decorated in a black and blue colour scheme that reminds her of the best nights in Zephra, and sparsely populated with people who don't seem either undead or immediately aggressive. The tiefling behind the bar on the far side of the room is grinning a welcome that seems entirely at odds with the dirgelike atmosphere.

She breathes out in the closest thing to relief she's felt since before Whitestone, feels the rope of tension that had wound itself around her spine slowly start to uncoil. "Hi," she says, and immediately regrets it when every gaze in the room turns to her. "Uh, we're ... new."

Yeah. Right. This is why she doesn't usually do the talking, though Ripley is possibly the one person in the world she trusts less with talking to people that they need on their side.

The barkeep doesn't seem to care, however, spreading their arms wide in invitation as they stride around the bar. "Travellers, yes! The House of Black Lanterns is here to welcome all such as yourselves. Tell me, what can Yarol do for you?"

"Y- Yarol?" Keyleth asks. It comes out squeakier than she'd intended because, holy shit, she's tall but Yarol is _tall_ , easily a head above her and purple and gaunt and yeah, okay, the longer she looks at them the more they look like they belong in the Shadowfell.

"That's my name," they grin. If they've noticed her discomfort, they give no sign of it. "And this is my tavern. Everyone who comes here finds us, sooner or later."

"Since you asked, Yarol, we require dinner." Ripley's elbow digs into Keyleth's side, entirely unnecessarily given how much space there is between them and the nearest table. Keyleth snaps her mouth shut and elbows her right back. "And rooms for the night," Ripley continues, as if none of that had happened at all.

Yarol ushers them further inside, smiling all the while. Keyleth fixes a look that she hopes leans closer to 'polite interest' than 'deep discomfort' to her face; Ripley, she notices, doesn't bother with such niceties.

The other patrons turn back to their own meals and drinks as they pass. Apparently travellers aren't an uncommon sight, beyond the brief interest generated by their arrival no one pays them any mind.

"What can I get you?" Yarol asks, gesturing towards an empty table.

Keyleth takes the offered seat. "Uh, just like, a regular dinner? And wine. Please," she adds hastily.

Yarol laughs and raises an eyebrow at Ripley. "And for yourself? A, ah, regular dinner as well?"

"Please," Ripley says. She curls her hand around the back of her chair and doesn't sit.

Yarol bustles off, presumably to get their food, and it's only after they've disappeared through a small door behind the bar that it occurs to Keyleth that the "regular dinners" she's used to usually involve some kind of meat, and her stomach flips unhappily at the thought of what strange shadow creature of death might end up on her plate. But then again, if it did, wasn't that proof it could be killed? So maybe that was okay.

To distract herself from that unappetising line of thought she return to studying Ripley, which is rapidly becoming the best way to pass the time in the Shadowfell. With the hard set of her mouth, the thin film of dust greying her face, and the ragged coat she's wearing, Ripley looks right at home amongst the tavern's other patrons. More than at home, maybe, Keyleth thinks, because Ripley wears death easier than any of these half-dead shadow creatures.

Then why, Keyleth wonders with no little despair, can she not take her eyes off the woman?

It's just to make sure she's not planning anything, she tells herself, quickly averting her gaze when Ripley looks over with a knowing smirk and resolutely doesn't think about how quickly Ripley's presence is becoming warmly familiar.

Fortunately Yarol returns with their food - and Keyleth's wine - quickly enough that she doesn't have too long to dwell on the shadows Ripley's high cheekbones are casting across her face.

"When you say you're new," Yarol says quietly, under the sound of the dishes being set on the table, "precisely how new?"

Keyleth looks at Yarol's tail lashing back and forth against the floor, partially because it's distracting and partially because it's better than thinking too much about what's on her plate. "Oh, you know, like, less than a day? I mean it was kinda afternoon-ish when we got here? And then we walked for a pretty long time here, but it was definitely less than, like eight hours. Or does time go all -"

"Very. New." Ripley cuts off her babbling with a look that could probably kill an entire tree. "You're nosy, for a barkeep."

"Information is a barkeep's business," Yarol says, but their mouth pulls tight and thin and Keyleth is suddenly absolutely, horrifyingly certain that they're nervous. "So much a part of my business that I might be willing to let some information serve as payment your meal and board."

Keyleth opens her mouth to protest that seems more than a little suspicious, but in the time it takes the words to travel from her brain to her mouth she also realises that all but about ten gold of her money is still in the bag of holding. "Nnnnnnnnnn - oh. _Oh_. Ohhhhhh I mean. Yes. We can make that deal."

Ripley kicks her ankle sharply under the table. Keyleth hisses a breath through her teeth and does her best to look charming and trustworthy.

"Good!" Yarol says with forced cheerfulness. "Enjoy your meal, and you can come retrieve your key from my office once you've finished."

"What were you thinking?" Ripley snaps well before Yarol's out of earshot. "Don't answer that I doubt you were thinking."

"I was thinking," Keyleth spears a piece of meat on her knife and shoves it in her mouth while determinedly refusing to look at it, "that I didn't fall through that orb with a fucking fortune. And that we get information too, you know, based on what they want to know."

"That ... isn't the worst idea I've ever heard," Ripley admits begrudgingly, heaving a sigh like it's the hardest thing she's ever done.

Maybe it is, Keyleth thinks smugly, resisting the urge to stick her tongue out at Ripley and instead turning her attention back to ... oh, okay, those are definitely regular mashed potatoes. Things grow in the Shadowfell? Why did the shitty Briarwoods' shitty orb have to spit them out into the shittiest possible part of the plane?

She mulls that over for the rest of dinner, drinks her - also surprisingly good - wine with a speed Vex would certainly raise a disapproving eyebrow at. But Vex isn't here, and Ripley doesn't care, and Keyleth ... almost likes that second part, and oh gods she should maybe have asked for an entire bottle.

"Coming?" she asks Ripley once they've finished, and the other woman stands slowly.

"The children in the corner," she says, without moving her lips. "And don't be obvious."

There are no children in either of the corners Keyleth can see without being obvious, and she decides quickly it's not worth figuring it out if it means Ripley gets to Yarol first.

They enter Yarol's office together, elbows jostling against one another in a motion Keyleth refuses to admit is becoming familiar. The tiefling is seated behind a large black wood desk, purple skin gleaming lowly in the ever-present blue light. It flickers across their skin in an eerie imitation of something living, though Keyleth can't think of exactly what it reminds her of. There's a large ledger open on the desk, covered in script that Keyleth can't read upside down no matter how much she tries to subtly crane her neck.

"Good, you're here," Yarol says, snapping the book shut. "I trust you enjoyed your dinner?" The studied formalities of customer service are incongruous in what seems more like a secret meeting than anything else.

"Yeah," Keyleth says, before Ripely can say something doubtlessly insulting. "How did you get the, like, potatoes and stuff? Everything we saw today was really ... well, dead."

"That's one of the things I wanted to discuss with you, actually." Yarol steeples their fingers, meets Keyleth's eyes and then Ripley's in turn. "The deserts are only one feature of the Shadowfell. We have roads and fields and rivers and cities as much as you do. Of course," they grin wryly, "You have to walk much further here to find them."

"Fascinating," Ripley cuts in. "So how do we leave this plane?"

Yarol takes a deep breath and tilts their heads. "The road back is a difficult one - simpler, since you've come willingly and haven't yet become one of the Raven Queen's souls." Keyleth chokes a bit at the idea that there was anything willing about her abrupt flight through the portal, but says nothing. "I could, of course, help you more specifically if I knew _how_ you arrived."

Despite the phrasing, Yarol's tone makes it perfectly clear this is one of the questions they want answered as part of their payment. Keyleth hesitates, sneaks a glance at Ripley, whose face is entirely unreadable. "There was a, uh, orb. Portal. On the other side." Simple is best for the moment, she thinks. "Black like it wanted to swallow the whole world, and then white like it already had." Ripley scoffs audibly, but Keyleth forges on. "Spinning like it wanted to be strong enough to pull you inside. We didn't know what it was, it just ... hung there. And I touched it and, well. Fell."

Yarol's lips flatten into a thin, nervous line. Keyleth can't decide if they believe her or not.

"It had properties reminiscent of an sphere of annihilation," Ripley adds. Her voice is utterly emotionless, but Keyleth can see the spark of scientific hunger in her eye again. It's more of an effort than it should be to remind herself that she can't be pulled along, that Ripley wants to use that knowledge for evil. "But I suspect it taps this plane's energy rather than the fundamental Weave, as it was able to be ... manipulated in certain ways that a sphere cannot be."

Keyleth narrows her eyes, her relief that Ripley is apparently in agreement with her as to how much to share with Yarol warring with her somewhat wounded pride that Ripley clearly knows much more about the orb than she'd let on. "Yeah. That," she says, refusing to let Ripley have the last word. "This was sorta an experiment."

"That explains some things," Yarol says slowly. "This is a crossroads inn in more ways than one, you know. It has been since long before I won the honour of being its caretaker. Normally I would have been ... notified ... of your arrival much sooner."

The memory of the faint hunger Keyleth thought she had sensed from the inn earlier comes flooding back in a rush, and she takes an involuntary half-step backwards as Yarol laughs. "Oh, you needn't worry. My profit lies solely in keeping travellers safe. Other guardians, well, perhaps you wouldn't have been so lucky, hm?"

For all that Keyleth doesn't feel very lucky at all, she has to admit things could be far worse. "Well, sure," she concedes, "But how do we know the inn is really as safe as you say?"

"Money," Ripley says. "And speaking of such, we've answered your first question. Is there more?" She speaks with the briskness of one well accustomed to this sort of business, and equally accustomed to getting her way with it.

"One answer, yes." Yarol taps the wood of their desk with one clawlike fingernail. "And one piece of information in return. The crossing you seek back to your home is in the city of Gloomwrought. Perhaps a week's walk north, and that before crossing the bogs of the Skins."

Keyleth just stares, stunned into speechlessness. A week? In a week there might not be a Whitestone to return to, if - in a week her friends could be dead.

Ripley, on the other hand, looks entirely unconcerned. "That's a problem for tomorrow. And if there's nothing else, I'd quite like to get into a bed. It has been a ... trying day."

"There's one other thing." Yarol pauses, considering their next words with even more care than they've previously shown. "There's a war brewing here. One that's been hundreds of years in the making, and one that will doubtless spill over into the material plane. Have you heard anything of Orcus lately?"

"Oh no." The words spill from Keyleth's mouth almost before she's fully processed the implications of what Yarol's saying. "He's ... bad. He's here? Of course he's here." At her side, Ripley's gone as straight and firm as an immovable rod, and Keyleth doesn't want to think about the implications of that either.

"Close enough that it makes no difference," Yarol shrugs. "This is a warning, for you and your friends back wherever you're from. Most of us here have quibbles of one sort or another with the Raven Queen, but She at least can be said to have the interests of something other than pure destruction at heart."

Keyleth isn't fond of gods, but she isn't naive enough to believe that they're all interchangeable. Nor is she trusting enough of Ripley to keep her next question until they're up in their room. "Is that what the portal was about? Orcus trying to get into the material plane?"

Ripley pales, and Yarol looks up with renewed interest. "Yes," they say thoughtfully. "Now that she mentions it, you do have the reek of shadow magic about you. But I'm not sure it is the Demon Prince's signature."

Ripley's studying the floor as if it's the most interesting scientific problem in the entire cosmos. "I worked with acid and residuum and guns. Not demons. I have no time for their petty bargains."

"But someone you worked for did, I think," Yarol says, in a tone that will take no argument. "Well. No matter. My message stands for them as well. More variables will make things ... unnecessarily complicated."

Keyleth burns to know more, to figure out how to convince Ripley to tell her more, but Yarol is standing up and handing her a heavy brass key, and the conversation is very clearly over. "One floor up, second door on the left," Yarol says. "Breakfast is served until ten. Your room will have a timepiece," they add at Keyleth's raised eyebrows.

Ripley seems deep in thought as they climb the surprisingly steady wooden staircase together. "This is why research is necessary," she says, quietly but intensely. "Building upon what Percival has created, to keep back the dead."

Ripley isn't stupid enough to be more specific out loud, but all of Keyleth's collected goodwill vanishes in an iinstant. "Don't say that," she snaps as Ripley takes the key and unlocks their door. "The balance has survived this long and -" she stops short as she takes in what lies beyond the doorway.

"One bed." Ripley surveys the room with something that isn't quite disappointment.

"Yeah, that's not actually a problem." Ripley turns in surprise, and Keyleth smirks before dropping to all fours as Minxie stretches and ripples through her bones. She's warmer immediately as she shakes herself to settle the soft fur, and rumbles a laugh as Ripley takes a step back.

"Fascinating," Ripley says, and bites at the tip of her index finger. Keyleth bares her teeth and stalks into the corner, curling into a ball out of the way of the window's draft and settling down to lick at her aching legs.

Minxie is a comfort, the first real comfort Keyleth has had in days, and the curiously wary look on Ripley's face as she settles on the bed and begins cleaning her gun is a delightful bonus. Keyleth imagines it must be difficult with just the one hand, but Ripley asks for no help, and Keyleth doesn't offer.

Her last thought, as the rhythmic click and spin of the gun parts lulls her to sleep, is that she should be more worried about sleeping alone in a room with Anna Ripley.

 

**

 

Morning comes to the Shadowfell in a pale fall of light that leaves Keyleth's eyes just about the only part of her that doesn't hurt after spending the post-Minxie-shape portion of the night still on the floor. She cracks her neck and staggers to her feet, wondering why she hadn't just crawled into someone's bedroll after taking her watch - and comes face to face with Ripley, who's leaning against the headboard and watching her with a faint smile.

"You decide against killing me in my sleep?" Ripley's voice is early-morning hoarse, and it does things to Keyleth's insides that she's firmly blaming on her terrible night's sleep.

"Yeah, well, so did you." It sounds more like an accusation than it did in her head.

Ripley swings her legs off the bed and stands. "Don't get used to it," she says, but there's surprisingly little malice in her voice. "We should get a move on as soon as possible after breakfast. I don't trust the light here."

"Yeah. Same."

Downstairs, Yarol tends bar for a deserted common room. Ripley, in personal possession of more money, orders them breakfast and negotiates for some camping supplies as well.

They'll have to talk, at some point, about the message Yarol gave them. About the coming war. Frankly, Keyleth thinks Ripley probably cares very little for the continuance of the world, with the Briarwoods and the guns and the long-growing shadow of the dead, but surely there must be something Ripley thinks worth saving.

Probably.

If there is, though, she's not talking about it over breakfast, or when Yarol accompanies them outside to set them off in the right direction, and Keyleth tries to put those sorts of thoughts away in favour of more immediate concerns.

Like how even though her vision hadn't been great the night before, with the mist and the blue lights, she's pretty sure that both the lampposts and the surrounding wilds have changed. There were definitely fewer trees and more solid ground when they arrived, even though the crossroads themselves look identical.

"Yarol ..." Keyleth says slowly, one hand on Ripley's wrist to stop her from doing anything rash. "Yarol, what happened?"

"Ah." They glace around the courtyard, smiling faintly. "Well, the House is a crossroads inn. It would hardly be doing its job if it stayed at Dead Man's Crossing forever." At Keyleth's look of horror, they shrug, unconcerned. "Don't fret. This has taken days off your journey. Assuming you don't fall victim to the pools, the Skins are just on the other side of the forest remnants."

"Your inn moved," Keyleth repeats in shock. Ripley snickers unhelpfully.

"Yes," Yarol says, somewhat tetchily. They look out to the horizon, taking in the position of the sun. "You should be off soon. The dead stir this close to the border of Letherna, and it wouldn't do for you to get caught in a skirmish."

Ripley makes a strange, strangled sound, and Keyleth suddenly realises she's still holding on to her wrist. "Thank you for your help," Ripley says. "We'll be leaving now." She stares pointedly at Yarol until they incline their head and retreat inside, as though they've spent too much time in the morning light already, and then turns her gaze to Keyleth. "Are you ever letting go of me?"

Keyleth snatches her hand back, blushing furiously, and feels the loss of the connection to Ripley - to one of the few living things anywhere near her - more keenly than she had expected. "Sure," she mutters, and bites down against an apology she's not sure Ripley deserves.

Ripley stalks off as soon as Keyleth lets go, and doesn't complain any further. Keyleth hurries after, shivering as she leaves the questionable safety of the courtyard.

The ground here is rockier, half-coated with a thick black sludge that bubbles ominously up through the gaps between stones. Despite the trees ahead, this part of the Shadowfell seems more overtly hostile to life, perhaps because it has something to fight against. The chill deepens, creeps through her coat and into her bones and does nothing to tame the smell of despair hanging in the mists.

At the very least, she thinks grimly, skirting a pool of something that reeks of necromantic energy, it means that they're both too busy avoiding the hazards of this particular stretch of the road to talk too much. The silence is so thick, and the few things that break it so unnatural, that she thinks their own voices would be ... _wrong_.

The day slips past in a kind of horrifying desolation. Keyleth can feel it clawing at her, trying to get its nails caught deep enough in her heart that it could stay forever. So this is the world Delilah wanted, she thinks, creeping just a bit closer to Ripley as the wind picks up. Just with more zombie giants.

They make good time, stopping for only the most necessary of rest breaks and switching off carrying the camping supplies. Ripley suggests a halt when they reach the treeline and the sun is just kissing the horizon, and Keyleth readily agrees. There's things rustling in the dead forest that she'd much rather see in something closer to day.

"So," Ripley says quietly around a mouthful of dried meat, "your friends still haven't come."

"Well ... you shot Vex." It sounds horrifically petulant, especially compared to Ripley's clipped, emotionless words.

"Yes, I did," Ripley says, as easily as if she were admitting to cooking the morning's breakfast. There's not a hint of remorse in her eyes.

"Why?" Keyleth presses. "You were going to leave, I thought, I thought you didn't -"

"Better me than Lady Delilah," Ripley interrupts, and for the first time Keyleth sees surprise flicker across her face, like she hadn't quite meant to say anything at all.

Keyleth shivers, and for a moment considers moving closer towards the fire. Then she considers that Ripley surprised by her own actions might be the only thing more dangerous than a Ripley without any emotion at all, and lights up her hands instead. "Why?" she asks again, but this time, she's less sure she wants to know the answer.

Ripley eyes her across the flames for a long moment, so long that Keyleth starts to think she's reconsidered saying anything at all. When she does speak, it's to say, "How many types of undead did you meet in the city?"

Keyleth blinks. The skeletons, the zombie giants, the vampire spawn, Sylas the actual big vampire … "Too many. Why?"

"Did you ever wonder how they got there?"

The superior smirk is back. Keyleth can't shake the feeling she's being treated like a particularly dimwitted student. "You know, those are the sort of questions that kinda answer themselves when a necromancer sets herself up as queen of the castle."

There's a definite note of disappointment in Ripley's sigh, and Keyleth silently marks down one more point for herself. "The _specifics_ , Keyleth. One of Lady Delilah's favourite spells is Finger of Death. Die from it, and you're one of her little pets faster than anyone can blink. Trust me," her lips curl in disgust. "I watched her do it too many times. If I hadn't shot your friend down before Lady Delilah got her, she'd be beyond your reach forever."

Keyleth sits back, mind reeling. She forces herself to breathe deeply, lets the sharp scent of burning dust that rises from where her hands are planted on the ground focus her. "You saved her?" Her voice is very, very small.

"I gave her more time." It's the closest to gentle she's ever heard Ripley sound. "We're the only ones we can trust survived that battle." And just like that, the pragmatic cruelty is back, and Keyleth regrets the moment of gratitude that had briefly warmed her more completely than any fire could.

"You ... you were helping us?" _You wanted us dead, I thought_ , she's not quite stupid enough to add.

Ripley scoffs. "Don't think so highly of yourselves. The last thing I want Delilah to have is more servants."

"But there was something. You believed in something, otherwise you wouldn't have cared. When you ran I thought you were happy to see Whitestone burn, fuck anyone left standing there."

Ripley shifts uncomfortably, scratching meaningless symbols into the dust. "The Briarwoods left me to rot. I didn't care about their god, and they didn't care about the more ... esoteric ... applications of my work. You ... you let me out."

"Reluctantly." Truth be told Keyleth still isn't entirely sure that letting her out had been a good idea, but she's here now, and she's proven herself to a previously unthinkable extent. "I thought you might ... I don't know what I thought."

What she knows, though, is that in another life she would have cheerfully chosen to spend time with Ripley, with her inventions and her interest and her willingness to sit in silence when it was needed. Would have cared for her, could have maybe even grown to love her, if she followed anything but money.

She can't promise herself she wouldn't still, if Ripley gave her anything resembling a promise. She had held Clarota's hand in hers, once.

Outcast. Traitor. A different kind of family.

Vox Machina still hasn't come for her.

"It was more than anyone else would give me, at the time. My thanks were sincere, despite what you might believe of me." She pauses, and the night's tension has nothing to do with anything outside their small circle of light. "What belief keeps you with me?"

"I believe in life and death." If she shuts her eyes, especially here in the Shadowfell, it's beyond too easy to hear the screams of the dead and the dying. Percy's family. Her own friends. "I believe you upset that balance and don't care, except when you do." She opens her eyes. "I believe you want me, because only a druid understands what your guns mean."

"Oh, _good_ ," Ripley breathes, and sways that much closer. She's all shadows in the firelight. "Very, very good."

"What is it that you believe in?" Kelyeth asks again, edging on desperation. She can barely hear her own voice. "It has to be something. Anything. Anything that ... you know, guides you. Lets you keep doing ..." What _did_ you have to believe in to do the things Ripley had done so dispassionately?

Keyleth doesn't want to know. She couldn't bear not finding out.

"Myself," Ripley says simply. The easy answer, the obvious one. Keyleth waits. "I believe in money, in invention and progress and the thrill of discovery. And ..." she hesitates, and the next words come with the studied deliberation of a thought the speaker has been considering for much longer than they'd admit, and perhaps never expected to give voice to at all. "I believe that you'll see us safely home, and you won't kill or capture me as soon as my back is turned."

It should be a lie. It should be an anguished, last-gasp guilt-trip of someone who lost before the rules were even set.

It's the last thing Ripley says before she leans forward and presses her lips against Keyleth's, hot and tasting of ash and not nearly as unexpected as it should have been.

Keyleth does the only thing she can think of. She bites her.

Ripley reels back, laughing, and makes no move to wipe away the blood welling on her lip. Keyleth tastes iron on her tongue and knows with a sick thrill that she's bitten deep enough to scar. "Oh, so you do fight. Good, it's always more interesting that way."

Keyleth flushes and looks away, the momentary rush of adrenaline from feeling her teeth sink into Ripley's pliant mouth ebbing under the unpleasant knowledge that somehow she'd _pleased_ Ripley.

"What was that for?" She snaps, but it comes out shakier than she'd intended. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, uncaring if Ripley sees. Let her see. Let her know that this game, Keyleth won't play.

Let her not look too closely at the conflict in Keyleth's traitor eyes.

"Testing a theory," Ripley says, all silk-steel pleasure, and the tone sets off a fire in Keyleth's belly that she absolutely cannot think about.

"Well, don't," Keyleth mutters sullenly. The coppery tang of human blood lingers on her tongue and she thinks about Kash, his lips rough on hers in front of the Slayer's Take. "What is it with you humans - people - and the - the kissing me out of nowhere thing?"

She regrets it immediately, not only because it brings to mind the sudden, awful realisation that Ripley was much better at kissing than Kash, but also because she can _feel_ Ripley perk up.

"Oh?" Ripley sways closer. Keyleth pulls her hood up, wishes she were trusting enough to turn her back on Ripley. "So this has happened before, has it? _That's_ an interesting new data point."

"Yeah. You're not special." Her mouth is dry. She has no idea what would happen if Ripley closes the gap between their mouths once more.

She wants to find out.

She thinks this is probably what hating yourself feels like.

 

**

 

They break camp in silence the next morning, and Keyleth imagines she can feel Ripley's eyes on her the entire time as the other woman packs away their meagre supplies. The ground has gotten wetter overnight, the dampness of the boglands creeping closer like the pools of necromantic seepage they had seen earlier.

Gloomwrought's towers, on the other hand, seem if anything further away. She can see them now, in the morning, dull silvery-grey spires peeking through branches that have taken on an oddly optimistic green tinge in the sunlight.

Keyleth wonders how long one person - even two people with a fragile peace - can stand travelling here. Her yearning for light pierces her like a physical thing. Ripley seems less outwardly affected, but Keyleth thinks - hopes - the oppressive fog must be weighing on her too. Surely there was something like a soul under all that careless cruelty?

The day passes much the same as the last, except for a brief encounter with a small group of shambling zombies near the edge of an unnaturally awful cold patch. They're dispatched easily enough, but the reminder that there are very real hazards beyond the environmental ones is a sobering thought to bring into an already awful day.

"This," Ripley says as she counts her remaining ammunition, "is why my research is important."

"I don't think I'd believe you even if I didn't already know you want to use guns on the living, too." Keyleth is lying on a suspiciously soft patch of grass, feeling her healing magic wend its way through her broken arm. She'd healed Ripley during the fight, when a particularly nasty zombie got its teeth into her, but she's not sure about spending any more magic now. Ripley for her part, hasn't asked for any more.

"You don't have to believe me." Ripley packs away her bullets and settles cross-legged at Keyleth's side. "But I'd think you'd believe I'd sell to the living. War is business, and the dead don't pay."

"Sylas did." The words are out of her mouth before she realises they're stupid ones to say while Ripley's within grabbing distance.

"For most of my life, there have been two sorts of people," Ripley says. She sounds distant now, like she's turning over some new puzzle piece. Trying to figure out how much is really different here in the Shadowfell. "I have employers, and I have puzzles. The Briarwoods were the first, of course. Your friend Percy was the second, for a while."

Keyleth looks away, gut churning, and thinks about Percy's scars. He had hardly been a person when they dragged him out of Stillben. "What am I?" She spits the words out without thinking and wants them back as soon as they're gone into the night air. She already knows the answer.

But Ripley catches her chin, long nails digging into her skin like weapons in their own right, and Keyleth feels her head turn with the twist of Ripley's wrist. She stares in fixed defiance over Ripley's head, not trusting herself to keep a blank face.

"You? _Hm_." Keyleth imagines she can feel Ripley's hum reverberating in her own bones. "You're something else. I'll let you know when I decide."

Keyleth swallows hard. Her mouth is dry, like it's coated in the ashes of the road. The ashes of the dead. "Right. You, uh, you do that then."

Ripley doesn't move her hand. Keyleth doesn't pull away, unwilling to give Ripley the satisfaction of knowing she's disturbed her.

She doesn't know how long they would have stood there, immobile, if a gloomstalker hadn't shrieked above them, the draft from its leathery wings sending loose dead twigs cascading down around them. Ripley drops Keyleth's chin as she turns to follow its progress towards the distant spires.

Keyleth feels like she's won something. She just wishes she knew whether it mattered.

 

**

 

The uncertainty gnaws at her for most of the next day, try as she might to wish it away. She goes Minxie as soon as camp is packed up, hoping to lose herself for a time in the tiger's slower thoughts and sharper senses. That Ripley is still unsettled by the form - almost morso than by any of the shadows and half-lights that litter the dead forest floor - is an extra bonus.

But try as she might, Keyleth's thoughts still clutter at the forefront of Minxie's brain. What does Ripley want from life and death? How can one person be so ignorant of community and yet so good at survival? Why does Keyleth feel like she's become an exception to Ripley's rules? Shouldn't that be a good thing, proof that Ripley can be _better_?

Minxie growls and swipes unhappily at a swiftly fleeing rat. She misses, caught in an unsatisfying limbo between half-elf and tiger, and her claws catch instead on a tree trunk, sending bits of bark flying through the air.

It doesn't feel as good as biting Ripley's mouth had, but she claws at the tree trunk, again and again, quietly determined that, unlike the zombies, this is not a target Ripley will take from her. But Ripley doesn't fight her for it, just stands prudently out of range of the flying debris, and watches.

Her calm is unsettling, and Keyleth tries to put it out of her mind, let Minxie's senses take over. It's harder now, where the bog is beginning to creep into the forest, the scent of sulfur and rot clogging her nostrils and coming dangerously close to a headache. Ripley is silent at her side, except for the occasional noise of disgust when her boot gets stuck too firmly in the muck, and Keyleth thinks the silence might do more than the ever-present aura of despair to drive her fucking crazy before they reach Gloomwrought, much less the Material Plane.

If Ripley thinks she's a puzzle, Keyleth wonders, scrabbling up a small incline and feeling a flicker of satisfaction as a small shower of rocks fall on Ripley beneath her, how does Minxie fit into the picture? How does Ripley deal, with the knowledge that even if she tried to take Keyleth apart she would find so much more than elf or human under all the layers of skin?

Keyleth would ask, but she's pretty sure she wouldn't like the answer. Better to stick to questions that would lead to constructive conversation, and maybe let go of Minxie before she gets too deep into the whole trail of dismemberment metaphors.

"Decided I'm worth talking to after all?" Ripley asks archly.

Keyleth rubs at her neck and rolls her eyes, but is saved from having to answer when the trees, quite abruptly, _stop_.

They've broken out from under the canopy just as the sun emerges, as close to midday light as Keyleth's seen since their arrival. Ahead of them sprawl what must be the Skins, a green-gold marsh that fairly sparkles under the sun. Wisps of light flutter flutter through the thick, marshy air, and along the clearest bits bob the dark, unmistakable shapes of rowboats.

"Holy shit," Ripley says softly, and Keyleth can't do anything but nod in agreement. Between the light and the colour and the proof of life - real life, not the shambling remains of a creature who'd outstayed their welcome - she feels …

She's not sure what she feels. The closest to happy that she's been in a week, certainly, but as she watches the boats and the lights and takes in the sounds of the bog with her regular, non-Minxie senses, she sees, for the first time, why some might call the Shadowfell home, and it makes her wonder what would have been different if she and Ripley had come over by choice.

Beyond the Skins stands Gloomwrought, appearing oddly delicate in the light, like it had put on its best cloak for company it wasn't quite sure it had been expecting and would rather tear it off and get back to the real businesses of buying and selling and thieving and trading and murdering and … _protecting_.

Even this far away Keyleth can feel the rippling shifts in the air, echoes of the carefully controlled rents between the planes that the city houses. Ripley, when she glaces over, seems to feel it too, her face tipped back to the sun and all the lines and angles thrown into sharp, stunning relief. And in that moment, Keyleth is suddenly struck with the certainty that whatever game Ripley has been playing this week has fallen away, dust under the simple fact of their dual-won survival.

Neither of them have beaten each other and, gods is it worth it.

Her only comfort is that Ripley must be as discomforted by the revelation as she is.

"Well?" An impatient voice breaks her contemplation. "Are you riding, or walking?"

Keyleth chokes and takes a half-step back in surprise. None of the half-remembered shadows from the House of Black Lanterns quite prepared her for the face of the pierced, tattooed Shadar-Kai grinning at her from the prow of his skiff. She hadn't realised how truly close to the borders of the bog they were.

"Makes no difference to me," the ferryman continues. "You ride, you pay, you walk, you end up food."

"Nooo," Keyleth says slowly, elbowing Ripley in a hopeless attempt to get her to pay attention to the fact that they were maybe just a few seconds away from being eaten. "We're just. We need to get to Gloomwrought, and we've been walking, but I'm sure you're -"

"She means we're paying," Ripley snaps, before Keyleth can shove her foot any further into her mouth. "What's your fare, captain?"

"Captain," the Shadar-Kai giggles. "I like that. Maybe I say eight gold instead of ten for that, hm?"

For a moment Keyleth thinks about arguing - Vex would haggle - but Ripley, even more impatient now that the end of their journey is in sight, pays without question.

"In you go," Ripley says, grasping Keyleth's hand and stepping carefully into the boat without a backward glance to see if Keyleth's coming willingly or not. It's mostly unwillingly, because it takes Keyleth too long to get her feet under her properly again, but she makes it into the rowboat without anything worse than a banged shin.

The stench of the bog rises as they push off, and Keyleth resists the urge to bury her head in her cloak. She settles for bringing the edge of it up to cover her nose and mouth, and notices Ripley doing the same. _Real_ , she thinks, as the mists thicken around them. _All this is real_. A clump of vines stalks close to the boat as they pass a sandbar, but it backs away when the ferryman says something in a dialect of Sylvan Keyleth can't quite make out. _Everything that we've done this week has been real_.

It's a thought that should be more unsettling than the ghoulish howl that rises from somewhere deeper in the fen, but it isn't. She's survived without Vox Machina for a week. She's kissed Anna Ripley and kept her soul.

And she has to go back, to the friends who didn't quite make it in time to find her. Maybe time moves funny in the Shadowfell after all, she thinks, but without much hope.

"Plotting a way to get rid of me now we've reached the city?" Ripley asks quietly. The ferryman cackles, seemingly unconcerned with the prospect of murder on his skiff. It probably isn't that unusual of a prospect.

"No," Keyleth says, and she isn't even surprised at the honesty. "Just thinking, you know. About going home."

"Home." Ripley says derisively, and Keyleth realises for the first time that Ripley almost certainly doesn't have a home to go back to. For all the bad that she's done, that still seems unfair.

"I'm -" What even is there to say to that? _I'm sorry?_ Sorry that you were run out of your first home for all the torture, and sorry that you can't go back to your second on account of all the murder?

There's a hint of sadness in Ripley's smile, but it's still better to look at than the ever-nearing city walls, covered in sickly green lanterns and something that's _writhing_.

"Don't bother," she says. "You're sorry, and we both get to live with that."

"Sorry you don't have somewhere where you can start over," Keyleth blurts out, before she loses her nerve.

Ripley's mouth opens in a small, silent 'o' and she doesn't say anything else, not even when they get close enough to see the broken bits of gargoyles studding the walls, or as the ferryman maneuvers them past the rambling seaward gates of Gloomwrought. Keyleth almost jibes at her, something about the resemblance the hands and feet and faces of the wall must bear to Ripley's old victims, but the words die in her throat.

They seem in bad taste, somehow, for reasons beyond even Ripley's missing hand, and Keyleth sets aside the problem of which one of them that says more about. She shivers as they pass through the last of the rusted black iron gates, and pretends it's just because of the thick chains she can see on the riverbed where the murky water eddies into clear.

Inside, Gloomwrought is just as loud as its surrounding bog, though these sounds are familiar: the cacophony of trade, the warning bells of the heavy barges upriver. Gloomwrought is a port town as surely as Emon is, and Keyleth is struck all over again by how … _normal_ the Shadowfell can be.

They dock with an unassuming _thud_ against an unstable-looking pier, and this time Keyleth scrambles out first, eager to focus on something other than her own thoughts. She offers Ripley her hand, and isn't quite surprised when the woman takes it, though she steps onto the pier with ease. It creaks under their combined weight, but holds.

"Stay close," Keyleth says, before realising that Ripley is, in fact, very close to her already. "I mean," she says, cheeks flaming, "That it's really busy here and we really shouldn't get separated and I -"

"Don't worry," Ripley says, with only a hint of her old impatience. "I'm not going anywhere without you."

She could, though. She has the last of the money and the intelligence to survive alone in a city, and the fact that she's choosing to stay with Keyleth … well, that's another feeling Keyleth's not looking at too closely.

A green-skinned tiefling pushes past them, heading for the skiff, and Keyleth tugs Ripley forward, off the dock and onto the cobbled square bursting with signposts and market stalls.

"Come on. We need to find directions." She can feel the difference in the air now, a lightning-snap of bleeding newness that clings to portals between planes and lifts the despondency of the Shadowfell enough for her to bounce lightly on the balls of her feet as she picks out sign saying _Crossings_ in Common and walks.

Home. She's going home. She's taking Ripley home, after Vox Machina shoved her through an orb and left her for dead. Is it taking her home if she abandons her as soon as they land in the Material Plane?

It's the only right thing to do, anyway, Keyleth thinks.

"I assume you know where you're going?" Ripley asks, as Keyleth turns them down a dingy alleyway between two buildings tall enough to block out most of the sun.

"'Course," Keyleth says. The signs are getting more detailed as they walk - _Shadow Crossings Currently Operational. Material Plane Archways A - C, Feywild Archway D, Abyss Archways E - K. Personal Departures Unauthorised._ \- but she would know even without them, just by the wind. As long as the scribbled note in Infernal at the end of the last sign didn't mean anything important, they were totally, absolutely fine.

Better to think about where they're going than about the fact that Ripley still hasn't let go of her hand, anyway.

The alley opens up before Ripley can either complain further or take her hand back, into a shining plaza easily five times the size of the docks. The throngs of people are slightly more controlled here, corralled by colour-coded ropes into something resembling lines by clumps of archways. The three grey-blue ones must be for the Material Plane, Keyleth thinks, though the crowd there is nothing compared to the one clustered around the red and black gates to the Abyss. Off in the corner, the green Feywild gate winks softly to itself and its lone keeper.

It's a giant, filthy, outdoor version of the teleportation circle room at the Alabaster Lyceum, and Keyleth has never loved a place more.

"See?" She says, grinning down at Ripley with slightly more confidence than she feels. "Shadow crossings, Fey crossings, teleportation circles …"

She trails off, knowledge of planar crossing rituals exhausted, and as they make their way to the first of the grey and blue archways, Ripley slips her hand from Keyleth's grip and wraps her fingers around Keyleth's wrist. Keyleth lets her, partly from familiarity and partly, she thinks, because this is the last time she'll ever get to touch Ripley like this. They'll go back to their normal lives, their normal hatreds.

But in the moment, they're just two anonymous women in a crowd, trying to decide which line is the shortest (Ripley picks the middle one, and Keyleth lets her), and no one around them has the time to realise they're holding hands, much less think anything about it. So Keyleth holds on, her fingers interlaced with Ripley's, and steels herself for the coming change.

"Where to?" The human wizard leaning against the archway is as pale and tattooed as the Shadar-Kai, wisps of shadow clinging to her fingertips and the edges of her tunic, and for a moment Keyleth gets lost in the solid blackness of her eyes. A Shadowborn. Someone who could never leave, though she spent her days sending others away.

"You, um. We get to pick?" Most crossings Keyleth had learned about were static portals. At her side, she can feel Ripley perk up.

"Obviously. You think we have the resources to police this many permanently active portals?" There's no malice in her tone, though, just a boredom that frightens Keyleth more than she would have expected. "100 gold for my materials cost, ten minutes for my ritual, and then -" she gestures to the gateway - "off you go."

A hundred gold would be everything they had left between them, but even though Keyleth doesn't have that much experience with these travel rituals, she suspects that's as good of a deal as they're going to find. "I, um." Meeting Ripley's eyes is harder now. "I need to go back to Emon. I need to see -"

"I know," Ripley interrupts. "Emon suits me as well. It's not ideal, but I can get a ship to … well. Somewhere that will have me."

If Ripley were anyone else, Keyleth would have used the opportunity to extend an offer: _Come to Greyskull with me. Let's … see what this is_.

But not to Ripley, not even after everything they've shared. She can't do that to Percy. Isn't sure she should do it to herself.

Still, when Ripley lets go to pay the Shadowborn, when they stand for ten minutes in a suddenly uneasy silence while the business of the plaza swirls around them, Keyleth feels something akin to loss.

So before either of them can step forward through the shimmering veil of arcane energy Keyleth grabs Ripley's chin, tilts her head up so it's a trivial thing to lean down and kiss her. She tastes faintly of blood from her split lip earlier in the day. She hardly tastes of the dead at all.

 _Yes_ , Keyleth thinks. _Yes, I could do this again_.

"What was that for?" Ripley asks, eyelashes fluttering against her cheek as Keyleth releases her.

She's been truthful this long. "I wanted to know if it would be different when I did it."

"And?" Not emotionless anymore, though it's a scientist's question. Ripley's doing a terrible job of concealing exactly how much Keyleth's answer means to her.

"Yeah. Yeah, it was. Good different," she adds, preempting Ripley's next question. She's still not entirely sure how to reconcile the things Ripley's done with the person she proved herself to be in the Shadowfell, but she thinks maybe that's part of leadership.

Or maybe, as Ripley would say, it's a hypothesis that requires more testing and experimentation. Maybe one day she'll find out.

"I'll keep that in mind." There's something truly soft in Ripley's eyes now as she looks Keyleth up and down. It's sleek and intimidating and there's just enough of a promise in it that Keyleth knows that everything between them has changed permanently over the past few days.

So perhaps this is what it feels like, to win and not want to die about it. There's been too little of that lately.


End file.
